Christine Dickson will once again be offering her popular Secrets of Vegan Baking Classes with Bay Area Vegetarians! In 2007, many of you will remember the Secrets of Vegan Baking classes held at Sur La Table in SF’s Union Square. This class is now being held at Whole Foods in San Mateo.

She will be giving a free presentation during our 2/28 Vegan Food Party, and we’ll be giving away one of her vegan cookie mixes!

Christine teaching at Sur La Table in SF

Thank you to Christine for once again offering these classes, and to Whole Foods for underwriting this class with space and ingredients. The San Mateo Whole Foods is also offering a vegan raw foods class on 3/9 with Patti Searle ($35 , more info )

Amba, a new vegetarian restaurant featuring Mediterranean fare, is open in Oakland at 6464 Moraga Avenue in Montclair Village. For more information (hours, website, etc), please visit the Ultimate Guide link below. Thanks to Amba for letting us know of their new vegetarian eatery.

According to the Ultimate Guide, this is Oakland’s 6th vegetarian restaurant, joining the ranks of Encuentro, Golden Lotus, Pizza Plaza, Souley Vegan, and The Breakroom Cafe. If you know of other vegetarian and vegan restaurants that should be included in the Guide, please submit the listing for review and inclusion.

We need a math whiz to provide advice for the Ultimate Guide. The Ultimate Guide (UG) is a database of San Francisco Bay Area restaurants providing vegan and vegetarian food in the SF Bay Area, as well as businesses owned by vegetarians.

The goal of UG is to promote eating veg by making it as simple as possible to find restaurants serving veg food. To support the best restaurants based on your reviews, it creates the Top Ten list of veg restaurants. This is currently a straight average (total number of points divided by number of reviews).

For example:
Millennium has 34 reviews and a rating (average) of 4.34
Udupi Palace has 9 reviews and a rating (average) of 4.33

We need a math whiz to help us create a formula that also reflects the number of reviews the restaurant has, as well, in the final rating.

And if you’ve got a website or blog or email signature, please link back to The Ultimate Guide – help us promote veg eating!

Garden Fresh, a popular vegan Chinese restaurant in Mountain View, will be opening a new location later this year in Palo Alto, conveniently a short walk from the Caltrain station. For many, Garden Fresh is synonymous with scrummy scallion pancakes.

It’s easily installed by downloading a file and moving it content to the ‘Notes’ directory of your iPod. The Guide does not programmatically alter your iPod in any way: it’s simply a collection of documents organized for easy browsing.

The Pride parade is today, Sunday, 28th, starting at 10 am. It will be broadcast on KRON 4, Comcast Digital Channel 99, Clear Channel Radio on SFPrideLive.com Live & Uncensored from 10:00 a.m, KOFY TV 20/Cable 13, starting at 8:00 p.m and Comcast Channel 1 On Demand/Local Events starting June 29th at 7:00 p.m. until July 31st

Look for the rainbow contingent – that’ll be us!!

Bay Area Vegetarians is a local group that gives free vegetarian info, support and recipes from Sacramento to Santa Rosa to Santa Cruz! We have volunteers wearing lettuce bikinis to show off their healthy veggie bodies. We have nurses handing out “prescriptions” to Go Veg to avoid heart disease and obesity. We have animals to represent all the animals who don’t want to end up in a slaughterhouse.

One member, Alex Bury, wearing nothing but cabbage and lettuce leaves, used to be a professional chef. She cooked and ate meat every day. But now she’s a proud member of Bay Area Vegetarians and PETA, and only cooks vegan food! Parade marcher Jeff Hoffman did the same thing—he graduated from the California Culinary Academy, but now specializes in scrumptious veg food. His cupcakes are famous. Jeff’s vegetarian husband, Drew, is training for a marathon and having fun in a lettuce bikini today! Speaking of running, vegan Michelle just ran her first ultra marathon—12 hours—a month ago to raise funds for animals. She sure did recover quickly! Their professional coach and personal trainer, Darren Middlesworth, is vegan and representing his field in a some fine lettuce shorts. Member Kathy Buckley comes all the way from Iowa and Markush Madurai came from Calgary to march with the veggies in Pride!

Bay Area Vegetarians has had a booth here for years, but this is the first time we’ve been in the parade. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for many years. Today we are marching with members of many local groups, including East Bay Animal Advocates, PCRM, PETA, the LGBT community and local animal rescue specialists.

We’re proud to live in the Bay Area, where Pride is celebrated in such a big way. We’re proud vegetarians. Today we march to share our compassion and love for all: Love and Let Live.

If you want more of the free recipeswe’ll be handing out, just call 1-888-VEG-FOOD or visit GOVEG.com. Eating meat hurts animals, and veg foods are a yummy way to be compassionate and healthy! Happy Pride from Bay Area Vegetarians!

After eating, we all wanted his secret recipes. He modestly said there wasn’t any secret at all, that he just found them on the web. Ah, but that is the secret, isn’t it — finding a good recipe out of the gazillions that exist.

Drew and Chef Jeff

Chef Jeff was gracious enough to share a couple of these recipes with us. He also added that the roasted potato salad is just mixed potatoes roasted with onions and bell peppers with fresh herbs.

We hope you enjoy these dishes as much as we did, and thanks again to Drew and Jeff and their co-hosts, canines Reggie, Mindy, and Theo, for hosting the fabulous party for Pride outreach volunteers.

Even if you missed the party, there’s still time to get involved with veg outreach at Pride. Remember, love and let live.

Quinoa Artichoke Salad

Quinoa Artichoke Salad

This recipe is very flexible and forgiving; feel free to add other ingredients you like or leave things out that you don’t care for.